Subang PKR lawmaker R. Sivarasa said Anwar, who was the finance minister then, was merely giving statements based on the findings by the Auditor’s General (AG) Report on the forex trading.

“The AG is a professional accountant and although it had initially raised questions directly with BNM, Anwar as the deputy prime minister then told them to reply to those concerns,” said Sivarasa at a press conference in Parliament on Thursday.

The press conference was called not long after a 528-page report on the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) into BNM’s forex dealings was tabled in Parliament.

Sivarasa argued that professional accountants represented the AG and BNM, adding that it was the AG who had signed off the report.

“The question of misleading (the Cabinet) does not even arise, and you cannot expect a non-accountant to question the professional who was entrusted to do the job,” he said, adding that Anwar’s legal counsel would meet to discuss their next course of action.

DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng also expressed his concerns over the RM21.5bil difference between the current figure compared with the figure quoted when the loss was first revealed in Parliament in the mid-1990s.

RCI found that BNM had incurred losses amounting to RM31.5bil as opposed to the initial RM10.5bil losses detected in 1997.

“We are talking about a 10-year amortisation of RM21.5bil. This is a large amount, and how could they hide the loss without it being detected for such a long period?” the Bagan MP said.
Lim, who is also the Penang chief minister, said the monetary authorities would have detected such a loss.

He said since the losses could be traced back a decade, the then prime minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and finance minister – then Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, now the Prime Minister – should also be answerable over the silence.
Meanwhile, Parti Amanah Negara communications director Khalid Samad questioned why the report was only presented on the last day of Parliament, when it was signed off by the AG on Oct 19.
“If the RCI was completed on Oct 19, they could have tabled the report on Oct 23 when Parliament convened. Why now?” he said.
Opposition leader Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail claimed that the move was politically motivated, as the lawmakers would not be able to debate the findings.
“There is clearly a bias. Why wait so long for the reports to be debated and how come we were not allowed to debate it?” she said.

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